Choosing hope over fear
Wisdom from the Field #29
On April 4, 2022, the Kansas Jayhawks defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels in the biggest comeback in NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship history.
The Jayhawks were down 15 at halftime to the Tar Heels. While a #1 seed and favored to win, Kansas has history with North Carolina, losing to them a decade ago in the same arena for the national championship. Sensing fear in the locker room, Coach Bill Self responded to his players:
“I told them at halftime, ‘Would you rather be down 15 with 20 (minutes) left or down nine with 2 left.’ They all said let’s take 15 so we played off of that.”1
Kansas won by three.
Putting Things in Perspective
As the pandemic stretched from months to years, the worry around “learning loss” in education has steadily increased.
Within the world of literacy, this anxiety seems to have manifested in a return to explicit phonics instruction, sometimes conflated with “the science of reading”. Districts are investing in skills-heavy ELA programs without enough consideration for authentic instruction and rich texts for students.
My own school is not immune. Yet when discussions have surfaced anyone’s worries, we’ve reminded ourselves how far we have come and the success already achieved. “We are actually doing pretty well in spite of what we feel are some missing pieces in our literacy curriculum,” I shared at one meeting.
All schools are wise to move toward more consistency in our curriculum and instruction, as long as hope is the driver instead of fear.
Wisdom from the Field is also a feature in my book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.
Source: Wisconsin State Journal, April 5, 2022